Various forms of storage systems are used today. These forms include direct attached storage (DAS) network attached storage (NAS) systems, storage area networks (SANs), and others. Network storage systems are commonly used for a variety of purposes, such as providing multiple users with access to shared data, backing up data and others.
A storage system typically includes at least one computing system executing a storage operating system for storing and retrieving data on behalf of one or more client computing systems (“clients”). The storage operating system stores and manages shared data containers in a set of mass storage devices.
The storage operating system stores and manages these shared data containers for a large number of clients, each of whom will have its own set of access rights and restrictions. As such, it is important to maintain separate access capabilities for different clients or sets of clients, but at the same time, it is helpful to ensure that the clients are able to store and retrieve data in an efficient manner. With the ever increasing size of storage systems, storage system managers are challenged to provide efficient storage access to larger and larger numbers of clients/connected devices. As such, it is useful to provide increasingly intelligent systems to aid storage system managers in their tasks.